


Make Me a Stone

by Lamachine



Category: Firefly, Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Firefly Verse, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 03:08:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2333033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lamachine/pseuds/Lamachine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Of all the people in the ‘verse,” Shaw breathed out, eyes staring at the constant and infinite night sky, “had to follow the one hearing voices.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make Me a Stone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [willowcabins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowcabins/gifts).



Shaw had a beer, and then she had another, and another. She gazed at the other patrons; common people, workers mostly, numbing their Monday night passively. None of them caught her attention, which wasn’t new – the more time passed, the less she was interested in other human beings. Often, she wondered if she should simply pay someone for the night and be done with it, but she worried a registered companion would do a background check and find out she did confidential work for the Alliance. These days, everybody knew it meant murder-for-hire or worse, and Shaw wondered what kind of woman would agree to be alone with her in a room upon learning that.

 

Besides, as Mal had told her many times, there was nothing a companion could offer that a quick fuck couldn’t. She wasn’t sure she believed him, but then again, she had never been with a companion (just like Mal never had either, she guessed).

 

From the alley behind the bar she heard half-Chinese, half-English shouts, which she chose to ignore as that wasn’t entirely uncommon, and then muffled gunfire. She felt a rush of adrenaline and smirked lightly, turning her head towards the exit. The bar’s heavy back door opened wide and a tall brunette walked in, pushing a short man in front of her, gun aimed at his head. Panic froze most of the patrons in place as they gasped in surprise, and Shaw’s interest peeked.

 

“Now folks,” the woman was all smiles, “I don’t mean to alarm anyone.”

 

Some guy made a move for the door and received a bullet in his leg for his trouble.

 

“If everyone would just stay still for a minute,” the stranger advanced further into the bar and glanced coldly at a cowboy who seemed about ready to jump on her, “we can all leave here alive.”

 

Shaw’s fingers brushed against the gun that she carried with her at all times – especially when coming to shady bars like this one. It was an old thing she had kept from the war, back when Mal and Zoë had taught her how to shoot in exchange for her showing them the most efficient ways to make bombs out of scraps. The firearm didn’t fit the Alliance standards, but it did the trick, and she itched to shoot it again.

 

The crowd hadn’t really calmed down, but fortunately for them, not a lot of wannabe heroes hung around cheap bars on Monday nights. No one made a move, and Shaw’s hand remained by her side, ready to snap into action.

 

“Now,” the stranger flashed white teeth, “which one of you is Sameen Shaw?”

 

No one here knew her real name, of course, and so Shaw guessed she would remain anonymous unless something tipped the woman off. She looked around, trying to fake nervousness, but the stranger smirked, not buying her act one bit.

 

“Oh Sameen,” she grinned. “She didn’t tell me you were so _shuai_.”

 

The guy standing beside Shaw moved apart quickly, his stool falling to the ground as he rushed out of the way, panicked as if she was contagious with a deadly disease. Shaw scowled at him before she turned to the woman. “Well you know my name,” she left the not-so-comfortable bar stool where she had been nursing her fifth beer for way too long. “Care to give me yours?”

 

Outside, Shaw heard the familiar sirens of Alliance patrols responding to an emergency call, and guessed they were on their way over. Funny how, just a few years ago during the war, Alliance officers meant heavy casualties and near certain death. Now, it mostly implied a bunch of armed idiots were about to barge in here, and judging from the glimpse of crazy she could catch in the woman’s eyes, it would bring the same results as when she encountered them in the battlefield.

 

Lots of gunfire. Chaos. Bloodshed.

 

That underage boy in the corner was probably going to die, and very soon.

 

“You can call me Root,” the voice caught Shaw’s attention again.

 

“What do you want, Root?” she stepped forward, calculating how she could get a shot without killing the hostage. Her heart beat strongly inside her and she savored the feeling, eyes locked on her target.

 

Root fully disapproved. “Now now, Sameen,” she shook her head. “Are you going to endanger all these fine folks? You, a browncoat at heart?”

 

“Being a browncoat’s got nothing to do with liking people,” Shaw retorted, although it lacked the usual anger she channeled in situations like there. If she was being truthful, she would have admitted that she was starting to be intrigued by this woman who knew her name, her past, and to look for her here, but not what she looked like.

 

“Everything to do with freedom I know,” her voice was lower somehow, almost reverent, “but as much as I’d like to, we really don’t have time to discuss politics.”

 

Without looking Shaw felt the sniper crawling on the second floor, slowly moving to get into position. Root did too, and after she shot him the man fell with a loud thump, sending cries and shouts amongst the little crowd.

 

“You’re coming with me,” Root blinked at Shaw just as the front door opened, allowing a team of Alliance officers, fully in gear, to step through. Shaw recognized the five man formation and their uniform, surprised to see people from her unit here – they usually dealt only with major terrorist groups –, and she pulled out her weapon, despite somehow finding herself trapped between the bar and frightened patrons.

 

The underage kid was shot first, and Shaw’s anger doubled. Before she had time to react three other patrons were dead, from Root’s or the Alliance’s bullets she couldn’t tell, but she quickly realised the armed men weren’t only firing at Root. An old man reached for the exit, but before he could pass through the threshold he received a .45 to the head and dropped to the ground.

 

Shaw’s smirk wiped from her face as she stepped backwards, shooting at the officer closest to her when he lifted his gun towards her. He fell down beside the bar stools and she barely had time to notice that another man aimed his own firearm at her head.

 

She drew her gun in a desperate attempt to save her life, knowing she had no time to make the shot, but Shaw wasn’t going to die without a fight. Before she had time to pull the trigger, the officer’s face turned to a strange almost comical expression, one hand clutching at his neck as a steady flow of blood ran down his padded vest.

 

“Come on Shaw,” Root’s voice came through the chaos from the right, near the bathroom doors. “We gotta go.”

 

Shaw followed without a word.

 

[...]

 

Trekking for hours in _goushi_ wasn’t exactly what Shaw had planned to do of her Monday night, and it was truly a miracle that she hadn’t blown off Root’s head yet. She cursed at the cold water that now reached her knees, her hands steadying her as she leaned slightly on the wet cement of the sewer drain. Somehow she felt both too tipsy and not drunk enough for this.

 

“Where the hell are we going?” she asked for the third time.

 

Perhaps it was because of her persistence that she was granted an answer, but Shaw had the strangest feeling that Root had just came up with the plan a moment ago . “There’s a shuttle on a farm just outside of town,” she replied, distracted as if she was listening to something, yet Shaw heard nothing but the water leaking from the ceiling.

The leather from her boots gnawed at her reddened skin as she accelerated to follow Root more closely. “You want to tell me why those guys were shooting at you?” Shaw questioned angrily.

 

“They were shooting at you, too,” Root smirked.

 

“Yeah, about that,” Shaw grabbed Root’s arm and pulled her back roughly before pushing her against the wall, angling the sharp blade of her pocket knife towards Root’s neck. “I don’t like being shot at.”

 

Root locked her eyes inside Shaw’s defiantly. “It had been my impression that you liked it very much,” Root replied, not at all phased by the violent gesture . As a matter of fact, Sh aw found her even more gleaming, as if she was enjoying herself.

 

“ _Jian ta de gui_ ,” Shaw cursed. “What the hell is going on?”

Root smiled, and then frowned . “They’re closing in on us,” she warned , but when Shaw made no indication to move, she sighed. “You really have to trust me.”

 

“Trust is overrated,” Shaw snarled , pressing the blade a bit harder against Root’s pale skin, but not enough to cut yet .

 

“Look,” Root rolled her eyes, “all you need to know is that they want me contained.”

 

That word , Shaw understood perfectly . On the job s he had been asked on various occasions to _contain_ a situation , and because of her predisposition she had never really showed a problem with it. Killing every witness related to a group or an event would appear to many citizens like an immoral massacre, but Shaw knew there were some horrible things in the ‘verse the public could never hear of .

 

Some things, people were better off never knowing.

 

Shaw was good at it too, _containing a situation_ , and intelligence always showed the work was necessary. Besides, her victims were mostly t errorists fighting to shatter the Alliance – she could understand why, really, had even enrolled in the war against the very people she worked for now – but she simply couldn’t agree with their methods.

There was something like an alarm tugging at her mind as she stared at Root, a strange remembrance of the partner she had lost only a month ago. Something Cole had said before he died on the job – something about odd numbers and situations that didn’t need to be contained.

 

“Shall we go on?” Root asked politely, and Shaw absently lowered her knife.

 

There would be plenty of occasions to kill Root later, if need be. But for now, Shaw could really do with a quiet place to sober up.

 

[...]

 

As promised, Root led Shaw to an abandoned farm just outside of town, where they found a shuttle neatly hidden in an old barn. After moving aside all the junk that had gathered on the small spaceship, Shaw raised an eyebrow.

 

“ _Cai bu shi_ ,” she almost laughed, but the very distinct possibility of dying on this rock wasn’t that funny, “that’s never gonna fly.”

 

Root smiled. “I’m kinda good with machines.”

Shaw inspected the exterior structure while Root managed to get inside, and the bulkheads seemed still solid despite the time the shuttle had spent rotting here. She double-checked before she entered the spaceship, eyes squinting as they adjusted themselves to the darkness that was inside. Although she was almost blind in there, Shaw noticed Root’s silhouette moving from one station to the other.

 

“There you go,” Root grinned like an idiot as the lights turned on and the door shut itself. “All new.”

 

“I don’t care what you did to it,” Shaw replied as she shoved Root aside, sitting down in the pilot’s chair and grabbing the controls. “This thing ain’t new.”

 

Root surprisingly didn’t argue and Shaw quickly set up the launch, remembering her first lessons as a pilot. She hadn’t driven a model that old since before the war, and the thought of Mal and Zoë returned. She smiled quietly as the shuttle gained altitude, slowly leaving the moon and reaching the stars.

 

It was a strange feeling drifting in atmosphere, and with an old spaceship like this one it seemed you could feel the gravity lifting, the body becoming one with the space around it. Shaw wasn’t much of a poet, but when she was flying, she found it came to her, that yearning for order and beauty. It was so different from the chaos she craved every time her feet touched the ground.

So unlike everything she was, really.

 

“You said ‘She’,” Shaw inquired when she was done punching in the coordinates Root had given her. “In the bar, you said ‘She’ told you about me.”

 

Root flinched, averting her eyes to look out the window. “The Machine,” she whispered, gazing at the specks of light that formed the only landscape out here.

 

Shaw raised her eyebrows in confusion, but remained silent.

 

“Since you’ve starting working with the Alliance, you received numbers,” Root started, running a hand through her hair before she turned to look at Shaw. “And they were never wrong.”

 

There was a flicker of admiration in Root’s eyes and it made Shaw itch. She pretended to busy herself with the controls and wondered for a moment if a normal person would be surprised at this. If a normal person would be frightened.

 

She couldn’t be sure.

 

“I’m certain by now you’ve suspected Alliance bureaucrats weren’t the ones feeding you intel,” Root explained moreover, eyes carefully studying Shaw.

 

“An A.I.?” Shaw asked, and somehow as soon as she said it, it made sense. She focuses on the familiar sound of the engine turning over and over, the slow burning of fuel in the reservoir, and checked to ensure they had enough to reach their destination.

 

“The Machine that gave you your numbers,” Root continued, “She speaks to me. She tells me what to do. Where to go.”

 

Shaw sighed, almost exasperated. “Of all the people in the ‘verse,” she breathed out, eyes staring at the constant and infinite night sky, “had to follow the one hearing voices.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Chinese expressions I use are from the show, and I've been using fireflychinese's tumblr to help me with them. Here's the translation for the terms used in this chapter;
> 
>  _Shuai_ : handsome  
>  _Goushi_ : crap, shit  
>  _Jian ta de gui_ : dammit, bloody hell  
>  _Cai bu shi_ : no way

**Author's Note:**

> This could still turn into a multichapter fic but I haven't got the time to work on it right now.


End file.
